Arpeggios

If you take out the 2 4 and 6 of a Major scale then you will be left with a Maj7 arpeggio 1,3,5,7. chord tones.
Flat the 7 and you will be playing a dom7 arpeggio, flat the 3rd and 7 you will be playing a min7 arpeggio etc.
The arpeggio itself is simply playing just the chord tones.

What you describe sounds just like an idea someone has suggested for playing around with a Major scale while highlighting the arpeggio within it or vice versa.

In a minor pent scale, take away the 4th and you will be playing the minor7 arpeggio. I do this quite a lot to break the predictability of the minor pent. :)

Lee

Vic

No.

Somehow, someone has made arpeggios much more complicated than they are.

An arpeggio is simply playing the notes that belong to a particular chord one note at a time.

Take an E Minor chord. This chord is made of just 3 notes. The root E, the flatted 3rd G, and the 5th B. That's it. When you play an Em arpeggio you will only be playing an E, G, and B notes, nothing else.

You can simply hold the chord and pick one note at a time.


Em arpeggio played out of chord form

e-----0-----------0-------------------0-
b--------0-----------0------------------
g-----------0-----------0---------------
d---------------------------------2-----
a--------------2------------------------
e--0-------------------------0--0-------


Or you could play the E Minor arpeggio like a scale. But still, you would only play an E, G, and B notes.


Em arpeggio played like a scale

e----------------------------7--3----
b-------------------------8-----------
g----------------------9--------------
d---------------5--/9-----------------
a--------2--/7------------------------
e--0--3-------------------------------


Now, if you played an Em7 arpeggio, you would have to include the flatted 7th note D. So if you are playing an E, G, B, and D notes one at a time, you are playing an Em7 arpeggio.

You can play the notes in any order. You can play any note more than once in a row (as many times as you wish) . But you must stick to the specific notes that belong to that particular chord and play only one note at a time.

That's it. Arpeggios are really very simple.

This so called simple concept took me a while to get as well. You always see guitar lesson sites that put so much detail into arpeggios that you think it must be as extensive as music theory. Chord tones would be a better way to explain them for simplicity sake.

Part of the problem is the term arpeggio is used loosely. When you are picking a simple Em chord like my first example, you might choose to strike two notes at a time mixed with the single notes. People would still say you are playing arpeggio style.

Example:


e--------------0---------0----------
b-----------0-----0------0----------
g-----------0--------0------0-------
d--------2---------------------2----
a-----2-----------------------------
e--0--------------------------------


This would be called playing an Em chord arpeggio style even though you are striking two notes at times.

A lot of the stress on arpeggios comes from speed tricks many Metal guitarists use. This is often done with sweep picking.


A Major arpeggio with fast sweep picking

e----------5h—9p-5---------
b--------5---------5-------
g------6-------------6-----
d----7-----------------7---
a--------------------------
e--------------------------


h=hammer on
p= pull off

This is a very common Major chord arpeggio. With a little practice this can be played super-fast. This is a very common lead guitar technique with Metal players. But Jazz players also use many arpeggios in their playing.

The word 'arpeggio' simply means 'broken chord' - so it is just another way of saying 'chord tones'

The word 'arpeggio' simply means 'broken chord' - so it is just another way of saying 'chord tones'

Yes I know..Italian I believe...but every lesson I have ever read on arpeggios never even CALLS them chord tones (at least not directly). THe first time I heard that term was on GN when I asked about arpeggios a while back.

Mike, how do you live without one of these:

Also, let us know when you get one of yours modded...

I'm confused?

:?

The word arpeggio is derived from the Italian " arpeggiare" meaning to play on a harp. By extension, the word arpeggio came to mean 'harp-like' referring to the distinctive harmonic effect that resulted from the notes of a harp's undamped strings sustaining and combining.

Music theorists later adopted the word as being suitably descriptive of the similar effects produced by the orderly pitchwise arrangement of successive chord tones on harmonic instruments, in contrast to the desired melodic effects produced by similar arrangements of scales.

In real music, the exact order of chord tones in arpeggios is chosen for entirely musical reasons by the composer/arranger/ performer, etc. The important thing is that arpeggios consist of chord tones and are harmonic in nature, as opposed to the essentially melodic nature of scales.

In real music, the exact order of chord tones in arpeggios is chosen for entirely musical reasons by the composer/arranger/ performer, etc. The important thing is that arpeggios consist of chord tones and are harmonic in nature, as opposed to the essentially melodic nature of scales.

Fretsource

Thanks, that is an awesome explanation. I never had trouble understanding what an arpeggio is, but I had never thought of it in these terms.

Fretsource is dead on as to the origin of the word, but there's a bit of convolution in the way music evolved.

Literal Italian for 'like a harp' is quasi arpi, which is also the name of the squiggly line you see in sheet music (especially piano music) before a group of notes. It means the tones are to be played with a slight separation, as in playing a harp.

The word 'arpeggio' has been around since the mid 1700s to describe a chord with more separation between the notes than a quasi arpi rendition; before that, these separated chord tones were called an "Alberti bass", after the composer Domenico Alberti, who used them extensively in his works.

The usual translation into English of the musical 'arpeggio' is 'broken chord' - it's not the literal Italian, but it gives a very accurate description, since "like a harp" is already taken by 'quasi arpi'. The literal translation of 'arpeggio' is actually "he played a harp"; its a third-person past tense of 'arpeggiare' (if you're into conjugating Italian verbs)

The usual translation into English of the musical 'arpeggio' is 'broken chord' - it's not the literal Italian, but it gives a very accurate description, since "like a harp" is already taken by 'quasi arpi'. The literal translation of 'arpeggio' is actually "he played a harp"; its a third-person past tense of 'arpeggiare' (if you're into conjugating Italian verbs)

Hi nice dicussion and the explanation gave by Noteboat is correct.

being Italian, I'd like to add just a small linguistic note: in Italian language "arpeggio" without the accent, is a noun, not a verb and it express the action of someone who's playing a string instrument in harp-style, the verb is "arpeggiare" and the third person simple past is "arpeggiò" (with the accent on it!).

Well Italian is a difficult language :D

Cheers

Matteo

p.s. regarding arpeggios I've always seen'em as a differnte way to play the chords. Instead of strumm the full chord, play it note for note

...before that, these separated chord tones were called an "Alberti bass", after the composer Domenico Alberti, who used them extensively in his works.

Not quite - The term Alberti bass was used to describe fairly specific arpeggio patterns of the type employed and popularised by Alberti himself - a kind of Travis picking without the syncopation :D It didn't refer to arpeggios or separated chord tones in general. Bach certainly never used the term to describe separated chord tones, having himself mastered all aspects of arpeggios before Alberti was born.
Before the Europe-wide adoption of the noun 'arpeggio', modified from its literal meaning of 'the action of one who is playing in harp style' (Thanks Matteo) to 'chords played in such a way', arpeggios, both as a style of playing, and as models of harmonic pitch organisation (for academic purposes) were mostly named according to local languages.

Fretsource, I have to disagree.

First off, it seems there's a revisionist movement in the definition of the term 'Alberti bass' going on, and the application to fairly specific arpeggio patterns is brand new!

According to the Harvard Dictionary of Music that I used in college (1960 copyright), Alberti bass is "Stereotyped broken chord figures used frequently as accompanimental patterns in the piano music of the late 18th century." There's no mention of inversion or tone sequence, and there is an accompanying illustration of the Alberti bass in use.

Now that definition has changed. The same dictionary in a later edition (1999) defines the Alberti bass as a rising set of tones, low-middle-high for a triad, and says "the term is sometimes inappropriately extended to refer to any arpeggiated accompaniment figure in the left hand". Dare I say it? The illustration in the earlier edition does not fit this new definition, as it begins low-high-mid-high (root position) and continues low-high-mid-high (first inversion)!

In addition, this new definition is not in agreement with vitually all the texts I've checked. A universally cited example of Alberti bass is the beginning of Mozart's K.545 sonata; this uses a low-high-middle arrangement of the tones.

The changing view of what an Alberti bass actually is may be based on the discovery of additional Alberti works - about 2/3 of his composititions are lost to history, although I read that some Alberti pieces were discovered in France in the 1990s, I haven't seen them. But I suspect it's just a few theorists refining definitions on their own: one guy says it's in the sequence of tones, another says it's the inversion, etc. The only common denominator in all definitions of 'Alberti bass' is that it consists of chord tones.

Which brings me to my second point:

I disagree that Bach (at least J.S. Bach) mastered the 'arpeggio'. While Bach did use sequences of notes that look like arpeggios, I don't think you can define them that way. If you look at something like Bach's Invention #8, it looks like he's starting with an arpeggio (and an identical realization of it as the left hand of Mozart's K545), but in Bach case it's just the first half of the melodic figure, which is then duplicated in the bass as a second voice in the next measure. The 'arpeggios' aren't really 'broken chords', but melodic figures, and both melodic figures in the piece have equal importance.

Contrast that with Mozart's K545. The arpeggios in the left hand are an accompaniment to the melody in the right - they are subordinate to, and supportive of, the melody. In this use, which begins with Alberti and his contemporaries (Couperin, J.C. and C.P.E. Bach, etc.) the figures truly are 'broken chords' - and this marks the shift from polyphonic to homophonic texture, with a single main melody built over a harmonic structure.

Harmonic structure is the key. In order to have a 'broken chord', you must first have a chord - and the bulk of Bach's output cannot be viewed as chord based, while all pieces using an 'Alberti bass' can.

Now that definition has changed. The same dictionary in a later edition (1999) defines the Alberti bass as a rising set of tones, low-middle-high for a triad, and says "the term is sometimes inappropriately extended to refer to any arpeggiated accompaniment figure in the left hand".

Typical! You spend years studying music theory and history and then they go and change it. :cry: But it's strange that we can find no other source to back up that new(ish) Harvard claim that Alberti bass is just a series of rising tones of a triad.(like the slow movement of the Moonlight Sonata) - Sounds a bit suspect, doesn't it?
Whatever the true Alberti bass was, it surely must have been quite distinct to exert such an influence on composers from the Bach sons to Beethoven and beyond.
As for JS Bach's use of arpeggios - I think I see where you're coming from. You're saying that they're essentially melodies that often happen to be made from chord tones. (I'm thinking more of his preludes than his inventions) They're not true arpeggios in that their role isn't purely as chordal accompaniments to a separate independent melody. Fair enough. Will you accept 'quasi arpeggio' as a compromise? :D